Skill IG effects?

[dier_cire]

Since apparently there is more to the thoery of how healing, arcane, and alchemy works that isn't in the rules, I was wondering if this is true for other skills as well?

Does parry now mean you deflected the blow? Does rage mean you are supposed to act aggressive? Do resists mean you still got hit? Etc?

I always swore the whole point was that the player was allowed to decide the IG effect themselves, but was recently informed otherwise.

[WayneO42]

There is a difference between choosing your in game effect and adhering to Metaphysics. Making sure your skill effect fits the metaphysics helps it to fit into the game. It is the framework on which in game effects should be built. You cant go around saying your Greater Channel is caused from a lazer gun. You could say it was caused by a wand with a focusing crystal on it that draws magic to the area, harnesses it, and shoots it out.

As for it not being in the book, that is untrue. It is in the World Guide on pages 27 - 29

[NewGuy]

Since apparently there is more to the thoery of how healing, arcane, and alchemy works that isn't in the rules...

As for it not being in the book, that is untrue...

The world book and the rule book are seperate entities.

[WayneO42]

The world book and the rule book are seperate entities.

Thank you Captain Obvious but both books are in the "Rules" section of the website thus are not only cannon but considered "Rules".

[NewGuy]

welcome

[dier_cire]

First, I never even seen the world guide. Second, why is that last section even there? It's like you have 26 pages of history then poof! blurb on metaphysics. Dictating how magic works is a really bad idea. The fact that it works is all you really need. Just looking it over and using the traditionalist dwarf thinking magic is bad would mean a dwarf wouldn't be an alchemist since it uses magic.

I could have sworn that no one really knew what happened during the cataclysm and that things just worked differently. It let us as players decide our effects which is cool. This ultimately allows for a dwarven arcane to say something like he's summoning the will of dragon to help him or something. But if there is a concrete document stating otherwise, then he couldn't. Why couldn't someone with healing just have the ability to fix someone ala Linderman from Heroes?

As for a lazer gun, obviously it wouldn't fit into the genre real well, but beyond fitting the genre, who cares how they generate the ball? If the player chooses it to come from the tip of this one sword, go nuts. There's no IG bonus, but if he/she loses this sword, and role plays that he can't use the skill, it hasn't hurt anyone and can make for some fun player driven plot.

[Atrum Draconus]

Noone is at all saying you can't do that. Woden couldn't cast spells or do rituals, but he could build you an item that just happened to mirror the same effect that a ritual did.

The metaphysics are there to make sure that things are consistant and to make sure that each thing is where it should be. And so that the GM's for the most part and not the players have a basis on how the things behind the effects work. It also is something you can point to when players say "Why can't I make a potion that does insert insane effect here" You can still call magic "a dragons will" or as Solari calls it, the mothers touch. That doesn't change where it came from or how it truly comes into being just how you percieve it to be. And what would be more magical than a dragons will?

[WayneO42]

First, I never even seen the world guide.

Its been on the webpage for a long time right in the same section as the rulebook.

Second, why is that last section even there? It's like you have 26 pages of history then poof! blurb on metaphysics.

It was in the main rulebook and then the argument was made to remove it so it was tacked onto the world guide.

Dictating how magic works is a really bad idea. The fact that it works is all you really need. Just looking it over and using the traditionalist dwarf thinking magic is bad would mean a dwarf wouldn't be an alchemist since it uses magic.

I could not disagree with you more and the core of the disagreement probably comes from our different approaches to the game. You are a gamist and I am a narritivist. I strongly feel that any world worth its salt needs to have an underpinning. The Metaphysics as written in the world guide have been in place since the beginning. They were published in the world guide as a way for players to better understand how the world works.

As for the dwarf, most dwarves dont know how metaphysics work. Alchemy is different than Arcane and less "ookie". The learned dwarves, the ones most likely to accept magic, probably know the metaphysics. Just because it is in the worldbook for players doesnt mean all the characters know it. Its a role-playing decission.

I could have sworn that no one really knew what happened during the cataclysm and that things just worked differently.

Once again...Role-playing thing. You as a player need to determine how "Learned" your CHARACTER is and take what knowledge you think they would have.

It let us as players decide our effects which is cool.

You still can as always. It just needs to fit into the framework. Its a loose framework. You can fit almost any effect into there.

This ultimately allows for a dwarven arcane to say something like he's summoning the will of dragon to help him or something.

He still can. All magic is born of the will of the sleeping dragons who dream it into exhistance is it not...see...Role-playing.

Why couldn't someone with healing just have the ability to fix someone ala Linderman from Heroes?

They could. Maybe they dont even know how they do it. Maybe they call themselves a mage and the healing abilities they call spells and metaphysically they function as spells but mechanically work like skills. Maybe he calls the healing time a casting time and performs a ritual. Its all in how it is presented.

If the player chooses it to come from the tip of this one sword, go nuts.

This works well in the metaphysics and I am in no way saying it cant work that way. In fact, I bet you can make just about anything you want fit into the metaphysics. Throw something else out there and we will see how it can fit.

The metaphysics are primarily there to provide a framework for the world. They are to the magic world what physics is to the real world. It is how the world works. 99.9% of characters will not know this. It is there so players, especially mages and alchemists, have a framework to go on when creating spells and potions. Its also sets boundries for us as GM staff when creating new things. In short, It makes a cohesive world.

[NewGuy]

[quote="WayneO42

It let us as players decide our effects which is cool.

You still can as always. It just needs to fit into the framework. Its a loose framework. You can fit almost any effect into there.[/quote]

Then why can't my character consider all magic to be a manipulation of essence? That is kinda what sparked this whole meta-physics vs. freedom to roleplay debate.

[GM-Mike]

I will add one thing and emphasize another. First the addition. One reason for the metaphysics is simply to have a notion as to how arcane and alchemists are different so that they are unique disciplines and are thus not doing the same things. Having that framework, as Wayne said, helps keep them distinctive. And for the emphasis, the metaphysics are truly loose. No, I mean really. You can truly make just about anything work in there. Go ahead, read it again, and think about what it really says and you will find that the contraints are quite small.

[dier_cire]

Oh, I wasn't saying it was new, just I'd never seen it. I'd never looked through the world book is all. I glanced it over but preferred to not know the years beforehand. I still haven't read them since then I can't use that IG.

And I'm not denying the loosness, but the fact that it is defined at all in the manner it is. Think of the Starwars and "the force". It was some mystic energy that bound the universe together, right? However, this came from some failed Jedi. Then toss in some tool inventing midiclorians... But we can choose to disregard some or all of it since it was just another character's opinion. Now if this same info came from some disembodied narrator, you couldn't.

This is where my problem lies. If this was written in the same form as the rest of the world book, it'd make much more sense to me. There would be people's (npcs created by you guys) giving their ideas of what happened. Then, it's not a matter of being 'learned' as no outside all knowing power has said "this is how it works." As a narrator, you can still use what you believe to be your version but it doesn't change how any PC percieves it, nor does it make it so one PCs version is any more "right" than the next since, in the end we only have people's belief on how it works.

Hopefully that makes sense. Basically, if it was given in a non-omniscient 3rd person pov, it'd be more palletable.

[GM_Chris]

It is kinda like having some kind of absolute truth in which to actually base a world. It is as if we all felt it would be impossible to actually build a world without ground rules. hmmm

[GM-Mike]

lol You just can't help yourself can you

[dier_cire]

It is kinda like having some kind of absolute truth in which to actually base a world. It is as if we all felt it would be impossible to actually build a world without ground rules. hmmm

Our world exists fine without them...

[GM_Chris]

Really? Reid I thought you took physics, Biology, and math. All things that difine the order of the natural world. There is an equation for just about how everything works.

Infact, if there is no order then I guess all those weather predictions on global warming must be utter crap.

Oh yes I just poked Al Gore.